Dictionaries ARE a necessity

Nearly 100 third and fourth graders from Piscataquis Community Elementary School in Guilford were challenged to create an advertisement for Valley Grange as part of the annual “Newspapers in Education” Program. This is the third year the Grange has sponsored the program. Students have an opportunity to become “Honorary Assistant Publicity Directors” according to Walter Boomsma, Program and Publicity Director for Valley Grange. Thanks to WABI-TV5’s support of community and school events, these young scholars not only learned about print advertising, they got to experience a bit of television as well during the assembly conducted by Boomsma to announce the winners.
Boomsma pointed out “everyone who participated is winner” and the Grange provided “thank-you magnets you can use to hold your school papers on the fridge.” He also told the Channel Five team that the Grange was particularly pleased that nearly every ad included a reading theme and dictionaries, reflecting the students’ appreciation for the Grange’s Bookworm and Words for Thirds Program. “Our goal with the kids is to create a love of reading and learning. These ads suggest we’re achieving it. I really loved how they used their dictionaries while working on the ads.”
Third Grade winners announced at the recent school assembly conducted by the Grange included Olivia (3rd), Jemyni (2nd), and Megan (1st). Megan’s first place drawing included the poem, “Reading is important especially for a test and if you read once a day, you really are the best.” Fourth grade winners included (3rd), Alison (2nd), and Ethan (1st).
All of the winners refused to give an acceptance speech with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but most were “media darlings” when interviewed later by the television news team. At least one suggested that the “best part of winning is seeing myself on TV.”
Fourth grade winner Ethan later explained how he came up with his ad in a short essay. “I came up with my idea when I thought about bookworms,” Ethan wrote. “I’ve seen pictures of worms with glasses and books so I decided to use that theme for my picture. In third grade, my class went to the Grange Hall and learned about agriculture. At the end, they gave us dictionaries and that inspired me to do the wagon full of them. I thought it would be cool to put a slogan and the Grange Logo too.”